Boris Zarrill
Boris Zarrill, or the Grand Duke Boris Nicholas Zarrill Derziner-Romanov, to give his real name, was the heir to the throne of Moldavia and one of the main characters in Biggles Takes Charge. Algy first met Boris in Monte Carlo in 1939 where they had been drawn to as partners in the international tennis tournaments at the Country Club. They got on well, often going swimming or golfing together. Boris kept a house, the Villa Clement in Monaco and also had a property in the Sologne, the Chateau Grandbulon. When Boris found out that Algy liked shooting, he invited for pheasant shooting there in October. However, the day before they were scheduled to depart together for Grandbulon, Boris showed up looking worried and said he had urgent business to attend to. He gave Algy the key to the chateau and suggested that he go up on his own. Algy might have done so, but the war broke out and Algy had to hurry home. During the war, Boris was the leader of a French resistance reseau, the Reseau Nicky which operated out of the chateau with subordinates such as the gamekeepers Pierre Sondray and Robert. It specialised in helping downed Allied airmen and P.O.W.s with an escape route back to Britain. Algy would later surmise that Boris might already have been working for French intelligence from before the war. This would explain why the chateau appeared to have been prepared for the role that it played in the war. It would also explain why Boris spent a lot of time in Monte Carlo--it was an ideal place to pick up loose talk from the the multi-national clientele. Boris probably had to rush away from Monte Carlo because he had advance intelligence of the war breaking out. Algy also surmised (Boris never confirmed this) that it was during the war that Russian intelligence had found out that the leader of the Reseau Nicky was in fact the Grand Duke of Moldavia. This could have been through contact with Western intelligence, or through the infltration of operatives posing as escaped prisoners into the French resistance networks. Certainly, Boris would later describe Pindar and Conrad Merthe as two Americans of Russian origin who, posing as escaped American soldiers, sought refuge with the French resistance for the purpose of betraying them. Be that as it may, at the end of the war, Russian intelligence began to hunt down Boris with the intent of killing him. He was first in line to the throne of Moldavia and so a threat to the revolutionaries who had taken over the country. He was also one of a few people who knew the secret hiding place of the Moldavian crown jewels. Both Boris and the jewels were important rallying symbols for the opposition. Boris evaded the attempts on his life several times but near the time of the events of the book, had a close call when he was shot in the back by Serge Prutski and had to spend time in a Swiss hospital recovering. Russian intelligence also sought to discredit him by faking his death although Joseph, a bartender at Monte Carlo who knew Boris well, saw through this as merely a ruse to dishearten Boris' supporters or encourage them to disband. How Boris, with the help of Biggles and co. finally put an end to his troubles forms the main plot of the book which is summarised here. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:Air Police era characters